| I can only share my experience, if it's relevant and helps that's great, but as always everyone has different circumstances so take it with a grain of salt. As someone who grew up never able to accept failure (I remember my first B in high school quite vividly), this fear drove a lot of my anxiety in my 20's and 30's. Fear can be helpful as a survival tool that warns of danger. Anxiety can be hugely motivating but it will eat away at you, like having your own inner Gordon Ramsay screaming at you 100% of the time to be better. Some advice never worked for me in the past like "foster a work life balance by doing x, y and z" or "these simple automations will free your mind from work" etc - that kind of prescriptive steps-to-success stuff was like putting a bandage on a burning house, just completely the wrong remedy for what I had going on. I have been getting monthly CBT with a clinical psychologist for the past year and it's been wonderfully helpful. I see it like taking your mind in for a tune up at the brain-garage. Sometimes you'll wonder if that oil change was really necessary and grumble at the expense, other times a simple oil change will dislodge something that was held together by old gunk and you'll need to spend some extra time to replace a worn out part or two, but afterwards you'll be running a lot more efficiently. Another thing that has helped was simple meditation, nothing spiritual, just setting aside quiet time each day to sit still, disconnect, and focus on calming the mind. It might seem counter intuitive to draw on that house fire analogy to sit still in the midst of it all, but think of meditation or therapy as a fire extinguisher instead and it makes more sense. It's really tough to advise because we're all different, however the way I see it now, there's an entire profession of people who specialise in debugging minds, finding a therapist I could gel with and making serious time for it helped me, possibly saved my life even. It might be the best investment in myself I've ever made. Good luck with the launch, sorry to hear you've been having a difficult time of it, it definitely isn't easy. |